Category: Birds

Spring Ponderings

3/7/2014

Spring has sprung. After the prayed-for rain, the grass is finally green and birds that carouse in my bird bath flash brighter colors. The only thing I hate about this time of year is the buckets of winter hair I brush off my horses. Since April is poetry month, inspired by my now shedding horses, with an apology to real poets, I will share a poem I wrote.

     Horses Change Coats

     Before winter clouds plump in the sky,
     before snowdrifts pile up too high,
     before the sun with its bold, bright light
     falls asleep longer each night,
     long fluffy hair appears
     on muzzles, fetlocks, and pointy ears.
     During the winter horses wear,
     a thick warm coat of shaggy hair.

     When the sky becomes bright and blue,
     when spring flowers begin to sprout,
     when birds build nests and fly about,
     horsy hides turn slick and sleek
     as the sun shines longer and hotter each week.
     Preparing for summer’s fiery glare,
     horses lose their winter hair.

     Horses must keep a watchful eye
     on the sun’s yearly travel across the sky
     as it changes places every day,
     climbing and dipping along the way,
     letting mares and stallions know
     it’s time for their winter coat to grow.
     Or perhaps to warn instead,
     it's time for their hairy coats to shed.

Now that our daylight hours lengthen, here in California time springs forward, so don't forget to set your clocks.
Happy Spring!

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April Fools

4/1/2013

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On April 1st, many countries celebrate April Fools' Day. Sometimes referred to as All Fools' Day, it is
not a national holiday but a widely recognized day when
people play practical jokes and hoaxes on each other. It’s
believed that April Fool’s Day began with the reform of the calendar.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII ordered the advancement of the calendar by 10 days and introduced a new corrective device to curb further error: century years such as 1700 or 1800 would no longer be counted as leap years, unless they were (like 1600 or 2000) divisible by 400.
Since their inception, calendars have been used to reckon time in advance, and to fix the occurrence of events like harvests or religious festivals. When the Gregorian Calendar was introduced, the first day of the year came in a new month. So now, instead of on April 1st, New Year's Day was celebrated on January 1st.
Communication traveled slowly in those days, and some people did not learn of the change until several years later. And some were rebellious, refused to acknowledge the change, and
continued to celebrate the new year on April 1st. These people were labeled "fools” and were subject to ridicule, sent on "fool errands," or sent invitations to nonexistent parties, and had other practical jokes played upon them. This harassment evolved over time and a custom of prank-playing on April 1st has continued.

In April, the birds sing and nest, and wild flowers bloom. Foolish or not, it is the time of year to celebrate new life.
Have Happy Spring.

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Guest Post by Michael O'Brien~A Poet's View of the World

11/19/2011

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I just noticed yesterday that I’d recently begun first drafts of two different poems with “I watched.” Which is a good thing, I guess, to be a watcher. I enjoy watching, usually, especially if I am watching children or grandchildren. I also enjoy watching the narrative that is going on outside, with animals, plants, trees, weather --the whole pageantry. And it is interesting to write down
observations and think about the meaning of what I have seen.

Speaking of watching, here is a poem about quail, connecting to Wanda’s blog posting about quail. I read somewhere that as we get older we tend to become even more interested in birds, and I think that is true:

This Morning I Saw Two…

then four
then seven quail
pop to the top of our fence.
The males wore crisper whites and blacks
in patterns about the head and crest,
a rich auburn breast,
while females tended towards gray
elegant in their more demure way.
The seven sat feather to feather
(no youngsters close by,
it being late November)
their heads bobbing up and down
necks turning back and forth,
seven fat quail on our fence this morning
busily taking a quiet moment in the sun
before hopping down one by one
to forage beneath the orchid rock rose.

My eyes must be wired directly to my spirit.
(The blind or those
who will not see
do they have detours into the soul?)

Last year a western tanager
flashed his brilliant yellow and orange
among the oaks,
burning a hole into my soul’s retina.

It seems to me that many of my poems, like this one, pose questions about what I have watched. I have got many more questions than answers. I like to take a single incident or object and try to draw larger conclusions. Although I try to be accurate in my thinking, I realize that I am often mistaken, misguided.

As we age, we tend to think that we know so much more than anybody else, especially than younger people. The philosopher Montaigne, however, warned us older folks that we just get more arrogant, petulant, and that we are frequently wrong. I agree. To find modern examples, just look at the letters to the editor any day in the local newspaper.

I have gotten poems accepted over the many years that I have been writing. Most have gone into small magazines. I’ve had work accepted into a couple of anthologies, one on living in Southern California and the other on marriage. I even had the poem from the Southern California anthology published years later into a college textbook of California literature. I have no idea what it was doing in there because I don’t think of myself writing literature.

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Wanda Snow Porter

Spring Ponderings

April Fools

Guest Post by Michael O'Brien~A Poet's View of the World

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